BERLIN — Lygia Clark’s current retrospective at the Neue Nationalgalerie makes a compelling argument that art, therapy, and politics are far more intimately related than they are often discussed as being.Clark was a pivotal member of the Neo-concretists, a group of Brazilian artists who coalesced in the 1950s around geometric abstraction in two and three dimensions. She often worked in the gap between the two, making both painterly sculptures and paintings with sculptural elements to them. But by the 1960s — and following a military coup in 1964 that installed a brutal military dictatorship in Brazil — she and many of her peers increasingly created art that invited contact not only from visitors, but also between them.In the later 1970s, in pursuit of a way to work at the juncture of art and life, Clark began producing material objects that could work as psychotherapeutic tools by activating or deactivating the various senses, especially touch and sight. Her early forays on view in this exhibition include her Bichos (Creatures), bright silver sculptures composed from pieces of aluminum joined by hinges so each object can take a range of different forms. Also on display are works from her series Nostalgia of the Body, begun the same year as the military coup. These pieces range from the tiny “Diálogo de mãos (Dialogue of Hands),” a collaboration with fellow Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica consisting of a continuous piece of material meant to join two individuals’ hands together, to the large “A casa é o corpo (The House Is The Body),” a three-phase structure that evokes the physical process of reproduction that is meant to facilitate in visitors a conceptual rebirth. Installation view of a visitor trying on a sensory mask in Lygia Clark: Retrospective at Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (photo Cat Dawson/Hyperallergic)Clark also produced works for groups, including Life Structures, a set of enormous rubber bands into which multiple participants weave themselves, and Anthropophagic Slobber, in which an inert body is gradually encased by colorful thread spun from the mouths of multiple participants in a complex dance that also leaves the weavers tangled together. The Neue Nationalgalerie’s presentation of Clark’s oeuvre diverges noticeably from a major 2014 retrospective of her work at the Museum of Modern Art. Though the latter brought Clark’s work into institutional conversation with more recognizable names in the United States, like Rebecca Horn and Robert Morris, it provided limited opportunity to engage with her sensorial objects. The Neue Nationalgalerie, by contrast, is replete with chances for visitors to interact with the work. While some of the bichos are on plinths, a plethora of replicas are staged on a stepped structure onto which visitors can climb or sit and move the creatures around, and replicas of Clark’s sensory suits — meant to block out sight so participants can focus on exploring their own body or that of another person wearing a conjoined suit — hang from a wall across from plinths holding smaller wearable sensorial objects and a table with replicas of those objects for visitors to try on. On the day I visited, children were playing with bichos on the platform; a couple was trying on a set of mirrored glasses for two; another person posed for a photo in a sensory hood; and a group of people were getting gradually more tangled in a network of interconnected rubber bands. Lygia Clark, “Óculos” (1966) (© Cultural Association “The World of Lygia Clark”; photo Eduardo Clark, 1973)For Clark, therapy was a form of survival: Turning inward to find and fortify the self during a military dictatorship was a radical act of self-preservation at a moment when very little recourse was available to the individual subject. Showing others the way to such an understanding, as Clark did for many, is nothing if not a political act. To package that politics as art or therapy gives cover to that act in a context in which its exposure as anything but would put Clark and others like her in danger. The Neue Nationalgalerie show explicates this strategic sleight of hand, a move that feels risky, as so much of our already surveillance-saturated world slides ever more in the direction of authoritarianism. Yet Clark provides something like a roadmap for one way to survive and persevere even in difficult times. Hers is laid bare here, and her invitation to visitors — whether they come for her artistic practice or therapeutic one — remains: slow down, fortify the self through the connective tissues of collectivity, and learn and create new pathways for survival and persistence. Lygia Clark, “Superfície Modulada” (1955–56) (© Private collection)Installation view of Lygia Clark: Retrospective at Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (photo Cat Dawson/Hyperallergic)Installation view of Lygia Clark, “Túnel” (1968) at the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz / David von Becker, 2025, © Neue)Lygia Clark, “Cabeça Coletiva” (1969) (© Cultural Association “The World of Lygia Clark”)Lygia Clark, 1960 (© Eduardo Clark)Installation view of “Casulo” (Cocoon) (1959) in Lygia Clark: Retrospective at Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (photo Cat Dawson/Hyperallergic)Lygia Clark, “Estruturas de Caixa de Fósforos” (1964), gouache paint, matchboxes (© O Mundo de Lygia Clark-Associação Cultural, Rio de Janeiro; photo Michael Brzezinski, Private Collection, London; Courtesy Alison Jacques)Installation view of visitors interacting with objects in Lygia Clark: Retrospective at Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (photo Cat Dawson/Hyperallergic)Lygia Clark: Retrospective continues at the Neue Nationalgalerie (Potsdamer Strasse 50, Berlin, Germany) through October 12. The exhibition was curated by by Irina Hiebert Grun and Maike Steinkamp, with Assistant Curator Sarah Hampel.